Dinner With Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table (27 page)

British diplomat. He served as Minister to the Baltic States from 1930–34, Minister in Teheran from 1934–36, Ambassador in China from 1936–38, Ambassador in Turkey from 1939–44 and as Ambassador in Brussels and Minister to Luxembourg from 1944 until his retirement in 1947.

Churchill’s secretary during most of the war years who
accompanied
him to meetings in the US, Canada, Athens, Casablanca and Yalta. Her book on these years,
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary
, is wonderful.

British Socialist theorist. Academic at the London School of Economics, 1920–50. Chairman of the Labour Party, 1945. Frequent target of Churchill’s invective. Died, age 57, in 1950.

Fleet admiral of the US Navy.

Churchill’s scientific adviser. German-born and educated physicist, whose mother was American and father a British naturalised Frenchman. He helped transform the Clarendon Laboratory at Oxford University into a world-class scientific research institution. He was Churchill’s personal assistant during the Second World War and Paymaster-General from 1942 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1953. A keen pianist and tennis player. His vegetarianism, teetotallism and abstention from tobacco made him an unlikely favourite of Churchill, who nonetheless admired his mental
dexterity and love of argument. Created Lord Cherwell in 1941 and died in 1957.

Conservative politician. After working in the Department of Supply, he succeeded Lord Woolton as Minister of Food from 1943 to 1945. He was created Lord Llewellin in 1945 and served as Governor-General of the Rhodesian Federation from 1953 to 1957. Died 1958.

Prime Minister, 1916–22. Dynamic Liberal politician who led a coalition government in the latter stages of the First World War. Churchill admired his energy but was disappointed first by Lloyd George’s admiration for Hitler’s economic policies and then, in 1940, by his defeatist attitude and reluctance to join Churchill’s government or accept the post of Ambassador to Washington. Died in 1945, aged 82.

British diplomat. Born in the British legation in Teheran where his father served as economic advisor to the Shah. After Oxford, he became a Major in the British Army. A Russian speaker since childhood, he was appointed ADC to the Head of the British Military Mission in Moscow in 1943. Served as interpreter for the British Chiefs of Staff and for Churchill at the Big Three conferences as well as at Churchill’s meeting with Stalin in 1944 (and later for Khrushchev). After the war served in the British embassy in Moscow and at the Foreign Office. Later joined the BBC World Service.

Conservative politician and member of the War Cabinet. In 1941 he was appointed Minister of State in Cairo and liaison officer with the Free French. From 1942 to 1945 he was Minister of Production. Colonial Secretary from 1951 until 1954, when he was made Viscount Chandos. Chairman of the National Theatre from 1962–71 – the Lyttelton Theatre is named after him.

Prime Minister, 1924, and 1929–37. Labour politician who split his party by forming a coalition with the Conservative and Liberal parties to fight the economic crisis in 1931. He pressed, unsuccessfully, for world disarmament.

One of Churchill’s valets, late in Churchill’s life.

Prime Minister, 1957–63. Conservative politician who combined progressive social views with opposition to appeasement. During the war he was successively Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Supply and Minister Resident, Allied Headquarters in
North-West
Africa. His period as prime minister was marked by growing consumerism and higher living standards in Britain, accelerated decolonisation in Africa and his failed attempt to join the nascent European Union, the EEC, was vetoed by De Gaulle.

As Roosevelt’s Chief of Staff, Marshall transformed the relatively under-resourced peacetime US armed forces into a massive power capable of winning a global war. He was both an excellent organiser and picker of capable commanders. His plan for an
invasion of Europe in 1943 met opposition from Churchill and was not enacted until June 1944. Although he failed in his
post-war
mission to bring peace to China, he had more success as Truman’s Secretary of State between 1947 and 1949, proposing and driving through the Marshall Plan of aid that fuelled Western Europe’s economic – and perhaps political – recovery. Briefly Defense Secretary for a year between 1950 and 51, he then retired from public life, accepted the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize and died in 1959.

A civil servant, Martin was Private Secretary to Churchill when he was appointed Prime Minister in 1940, becoming his Principal Private Secretary the following year and serving him closely both in Downing Street and on his trips around the world during the war. After the war, he served in the Colonial Office and was High Commissioner in Malta from 1965 to 1967. He died in 1991.

Personal assistant to Averell Harriman. Kept a diary of his service with Ambassador Harriman.

Soviet Foreign Minister, 1939–49 and 1953–56. Stalin assigned him to drive through rapprochement with Hitler, agreeing the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact in August 1939, enabling the Soviet Union to invade eastern Poland and subsequently the Baltic States and, less successfully, Finland. Once Germany attacked the Soviet Union, he proved a tough negotiator with his new British and American allies. He lived to the age of 96, dying in 1986. Churchill considered him “a man of outstanding ability and cold-blooded ruthlessness”.

Lawyer, who advised King Edward VIII during the abdication crisis of 1936 and served as Director-General of the Ministry of Information in 1940. He was Solicitor-General in 1945 and subsequently a Conservative MP, serving in Churchill’s second administration as Minister for Labour. He gained a peerage in 1957 and died in 1965.

Born Venetia Stanley. Overly close personal confidante – despite considerable age difference – of the Liberal Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, during the First World War. Married his former Private Secretary, Edwin Montagu. Clementine Churchill’s first cousin.

British soldier. He commanded the British Eighth Army in North Africa in 1942, masterminding its decisive victory over Rommel at the battle of El Alamein and proceeding to sweep German forces out of North Africa and then take the fight into Sicily and Italy. He was Supreme Allied Commander until disagreement with Eisenhower led to the latter assuming the role. “Monty” led ground forces on D-Day and commanded the British advance through Western Europe. He was created Field Marshal in 1944 and Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946 when he succeeded Lord Alanbrooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and served as Eisenhower’s deputy as Supreme Commander of NATOTO in Europe from 1951 to 1958. He was popular with his troops despite his personal asceticism and disciplinarian attitude, but his American colleagues found his manner overbearing, verging on insufferable.

US Treasury Secretary, 1934–45. Before the war, he had fought with Roosevelt to try and balance the budget. In 1944 he proposed breaking Germany up into its constituent states after the war. Even more controversially, he called for it to be economically disabled and returned to a primarily agrarian society. The plan was adopted in September but Truman backed away from it and, believing his advice was being ignored, Morgenthau resigned in 1945, and published a book propagating his ideas on a Carthaginian peace.

Henry Vollam Morton (1892–1972) was a British journalist and travel writer whose
In Search of England
was a best-selling book, first published in 1927 and frequently reprinted. Present at the Newfoundland meeting in the Atlantic. After the war he emigrated to South Africa.

Detective and Churchill’s personal bodyguard from 1950 until his death in 1965. He shared Churchill’s love of painting.

White House principal housekeeper, 1933–46. Born in 1874, her
White House Diary
was published in 1947. Famous for her substandard cuisine.

British diplomat and politician. He opposed appeasement before the war and was elected a National Labour MP in coalition with the Conservatives. During the war he served as Parliamentary Secretary and Governor of the BBC. He was knighted in 1953. A historian and biographer, his diaries provide an illuminating
narrative of the events and personalities of his political and social circle from 1930 until 1962.

Stalin’s principal interpreter at the Big Three meetings.

One of Churchill’s wartime Assistant Private Secretaries. He was appointed to work for Churchill at the Admiralty and then at Downing Street. He was with Churchill at Potsdam and accompanied him on his tour of the troops in Berlin. Then he transferred to the Foreign Service and became Ambassador to the Republic of Ireland. Knighted in 1971.

Developed Churchill’s Map Room which went everywhere with the Prime Minister including to the White House in 1941 and all foreign conferences. Captain Pim was a trusted staff member throughout the Second World War

Chief Petty Officer and a Churchill favourite. He was in charge of catering for the Prime Minister at Carthage, Teheran and Potsdam.

Brigadier-General in the First World War and Conservative MP from 1910 to 1940 whereupon he became Lord Croft. He joined Churchill in opposing granting greater sovereignty to India in 1935 and was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for War from 1940 to 1945.

Wife of Jacques Pol Roger, co-director of Churchill’s favourite champagne house. Churchill was entranced by her when they first met in 1945 and their friendship continued, fortified by the produce of the family firm, until his death. She died in 2009, aged 89.

Air Chief Marshal of the RAF, 1940–45. He served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War and helped oversee the RAF’s rapid expansion in 1939. Despite disagreements, he worked closely and successfully with Churchill and advocated the strategic bombing offensive on Germany. He also won the esteem of Eisenhower. He retired from the RAF in 1945, was given a peerage and directed the British atomic energy programme until 1951. Died 1971.

Churchill’s personal secretary during his second premiership, 1949–55.

Churchill’s literary agent. He was born in Hungary in 1904 but naturalised British in 1940. In later life, Churchill greatly enjoyed staying with Reves and his glamorous partner, Wendy Russell, at their home, the Villa La Pausa on the French Riviera.

Creator of the BBC, serving as its first General Manager in 1922 and its Director-General from 1928 to 1938, shaping its public service ethos. A dour Scot, he was made Lord Reith in 1940 and held office successively as Minister of Information,
Transport, Works and Planning. His relations with Churchill were fraught and Churchill sacked him in 1942. He subsequently channelled his energies into the development of new towns and harbouring grudges. Died, 1971.

Wife of President Roosevelt. Born into a wealthy New York family in 1884, she married the future President in 1905. The marriage held together through mutual affection and shared political activism rather than love and exclusive devotion. She outlived her husband by eighteen years and, as a US delegate to the UN General Assembly, chaired the UN Human Rights Commission.

US President, 1933–45. A wealthy New Yorker whose distant cousin, Theodore, was also President. Confined to a wheelchair by polio in 1921, Roosevelt became Governor of New York in 1928 and was elected to the White House in the midst of the Great Depression. The extent to which his New Deal policies were successful remains contentious, although they did have positive effects on morale. His policy of neutrality – while sending supplies to Britain – ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage two months after the Yalta Conference and a month before the war’s end in Europe.

A member of the banking family, Rothschild became a Labour peer in 1937 and served in the British Security Service, MI5, during the war, winning the George Medal. However, his earlier friendship at Cambridge with those subsequently unmasked as Soviet spies brought him – unfairly – under suspicion. After the war he was a prominent zoologist and advised the Tory prime
ministers, Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. He died in 1990, aged 79.

Civil servant. Captained the English hockey team both before and after the Second World War. Churchill’s Private Secretary 1941, and Principal Private Secretary in 1945, continued to serve and advise the subsequent Labour government on economic policy. Knighted in 1949 and died, aged 64, in 1972.

Czech-born White House chef, famed for his mastery of international cuisine. In 1957 he published an account of his time in the kitchens, complete with the favourite recipes of President Eisenhower and his wife.

Churchill’s valet during most of the war years, accompanied Churchill on most of his overseas trips.